AOL Brand Marketer Bolts For Yahoo

AOLers warned us this would happen when Armstrong made his chief of staff, Maureen Sullivan, CMO

AOL's director for global brand marketing, Grant Beliare, left the company this month and joined Yahoo as a senior director of global marketing.

He started August 23.

A reader tells us AOL employees discussing Grant's defection at a recent industry event described him as "THE marketing guy."

From 30,000 feet up, Grant's move isn't a huge one. It's probably not even a surprise: when AOL CEO Tim Armstrong made his former chief of staff, Maureen Sullivan, AOL CMO, plenty of employees warned us an exodus of older AOL execs would soon follow.

People we talk to about AOL always have two ways of looking at these exits. Armstrong haters will argue he's pushing out all of AOL's old school talent with his botched execution of an already murky vision.

Armstrong supporters will ask: You mean the old school talent that ruined the company?